Canada undefeated to gold medal match

MISSISSAUGA, Canada, May 18, 2014 - Canada quickly beat Costa Rica 25-14, 25-16, 25-12 in a preview of Monday’s gold medal final in NORCECA Third Round Pool Q Men’s World Championship Qualification Tournament.

Both undefeated until today, Canada will again meet Costa Rica for the gold medal and the only berth for the World Championships in Poland in the fall.

Canada’s Gavin Schmitt was the top scorer with 14, followed by Toontje van Lankvelt with 13; and Jason DeRocco had another big game today with 12 points.

Richard Smith Hall was again the top contributor to Costa Rica’s effort with six points, followed by Cesar Gomez Lopez with five.

“There are things that still need to be polished, we’re not perfect. We got (setter) Ciaran (McGovern) to play more because he needs to get more work with the guys.  We have one more to go so we have to focus on that. This morning we had a really long and tough training session, so the guys stayed focused and concentrated.  Tomorrow is one more step that we need to go through to get to the Worlds.”  -Glenn Hoag, Canada’s head coach.

“They played not bad, and they have a couple of good players, but we were prepared. We did a lot of jumping this morning – we practised hard – it’s a long tournament and there are still things that we need to work on.  We’re looking forward to tomorrow.” - Gavin Schmitt, top scorer for Canada.

“Our work was to come to Canada and take second place, so we could go to other competitions and then from there, start working harder to reach a bit further and then see what happens.” – Cesar Salas, Coach of Costa Rica.

“I think we did what we had to do. We know that we normally don’t play at the same level as Canada. Today we worked a lot on defense, serving, and trying to block to make some kinds of points. That was our work, so I think we did well today. And hopefully tomorrow we will have another nice game.” – Richard Hall Smith, Captain of Costa Rica.